Month: October 2018

Payment acceptance marks at Lawsons, note that Overseas Apple Pay not available is out of date information, every flavor of Apple Pay works.

The bewildering array of payment options is overkill. Many people opt for the simplicity and speed of Apple Pay Suica.

Back in the pre-iPhone era Japanese manufactures were busy churning out internet connected, e-wallet capable handsets with high quality cameras (for that time) that most of the western IT media pooh-poohed: ‘nobody needs all that fancy stuff’.

Unfortunately the Japanese IT media paid way too much attention to it all endlessly handwringing over the Galapagos Syndrome of Japanese technology that nobody seemed to need or want. Worse than that, people actually bought the media con. Then something strange happened in 2016 when Apple unveiled FeliCa Apple Pay and went global with it in 2017.

Fortunately there is one Japanese journalist who is calling it: Masahiro Sano. Sano san’s latest piece on Nikkei notes the irony of Japanese companies falling over each other to roll out useless redundant QR Code platforms because QR Codes are “standard in China” (and nowhere else), while Apple and Google are deploying FeliCa as one more standard checklist item on their digital wallet platforms.

Fake QR Code payment mania confuses customers. Put another way QR Code payment platform apps are about de-centralizing the digital wallet into an ever-growing collection of apps while Apple Pay and Google Pay are about centralizing different technologies into a unified and smooth user experience for payments, tickets, IDs, reward cards and more. Which approach do you think will win in the long run?

Fortunately iOS 12.1 has Suica bug fixes: Apple Engineering closed my original iOS 11.2.5 Suica error bug report filed in January 2018 saying the issue has been fixed in iOS 12.1. iOS 12.1 developer beta 4 went out earlier this week with 2 more likely to go before the official release. The just announced October 30 Apple Special Event would be a natural iOS 12.1 official drop date.

Anybody who has lived in Japan any length of time knows the economic reality here is rarely reported accurately in the western media. The worn out narratives of the ‘lost decade’ (or is it two?), the ‘aging society’, the ‘Japan is so over’ are just too easy for the challenged journalists of our era not to use. Otherwise they might have to actually do research and fact checking.

When some American friends visited Japan in 2010 I took them on a hot spring tour. For the entire trip they marveled at how prosperous things seemed, “the media always says that Japan is in such bad shape. I can’t believe the difference.” I imagine that lots of inbound visitors are surprised by the reality they find in Japan, especially visitors from the West where the worn out narratives are endlessly recycled.

Japan’s economic revival began with the Nikkei stock market revival when the Abe Government took power on December 26, 2014. A nice little Christmas present that keeps on giving. And now Morgan Stanley is taking notice, it even mentions the role of contactless payments in Japan’s continuing economic growth:

Another contributor to growth will come from Japan’s shift away from cash. Just 21% of transactions in Japan are currently cashless, versus an average of 45% outside Japan. “Reducing the cost of cash processing is a key element of productivity reforms,” says Japan Banks analyst Mia Nagasaka, who forecasts that cashless transactions will expand to 30% of the total by 2025.

Although a reduction in cash transactions is good news for the economy as a whole, it is particularly important for banks. As in the U.S. and other markets, Japanese banks stand to save a great deal as consumers switch to mobile banking and paying with credit cards or digital wallets rather than cash. All told, Nagasaka believes that Japan’s megabanks could raise their average return on equity from 6% currently to 8% by 2025 through cost-cutting and technology adoption. Under this scenario, valuations for Japanese banks would improve from 0.6 times book value to nearly 1x—a big leap in an industry that many investors had written off.

With just one year to go until the Japanese sales tax is raised to 10% there are some very interesting implementation proposals the Abe Government is putting on the table. The most interesting one is the ‘cash tax’: when you pay for things in cash you pay a 10% sales tax, when you pay for things with contactless payment you pay 8% sales tax, exactly what everybody pays now.

If the proposals are passed by the Japanese National Diet, it will certainly drive the growing contactless payments wave to tsunami size. Everybody who does not use contactless payments now will certainly start doing so to save 2% at at checkout. The changes will be fascinating to watch. Apple’s global FeliCa move is looking more genius all the time.

It’s very strange that the JCB QUICPay network has gained the most benefit from the Apple Pay makeover of the Japanese contactless payments market instead of the Docomo iD network. Docomo invented the Osaifu-Keitai standard with Sony in 2004 and was the natural favorite, but iD has only treaded water while JCB has seen steady gains in QUICPay issue cards, customers and transactions.

Docomo iD problems boil down to bad blood between Docomo and Sumitomo Mitsui Banking Corporation (SMBC) who issue and manage Docomo d-CARDs and help run the iD payment network. Up until 2016 VISA d-CARD was king. Then something happened. Things got so bad between the 2 companies that Docomo removed all VISA branding from their website and Docomo stores strongly urge new customers to create a Mastercard d-CARD not a VISA d-CARD. VISA might seem like the target here but SMBC, the first Japanese bank to issue VISA back in 1968, are the real power behind the VISA throne in Japan, and the real target for Docomo ire.

First of all Docomo and SMBC agree to start all over again to rebuild the d-CARD business and develop new services. <Nice boilerplate stuff with no promises and no deadline for delivering anything>.

Sumitomo Mitsui Financial Group will buy back all outstanding shares of Sumitomo Mitsui Card Co. (34% of the company) from NTT Docomo by April 1, 2019. <Why does Docomo want out of the credit card business? Do they think that credit card industry pricing and fee structures are unsustainable in the face of ubiquitous contactless payments of all flavors, online banking and ever more competition? Do they think the credit card industry is going to have to live on far less and have to aggressively restructure? Or is it something else like getting out of the 2 year contract subsidizing business? Inquiring minds want to know.>

Docomo NTT and SMBC will work together to develop and deliver more cashless solutions and expand the iD network. <That sounds nice but what does it really mean? Is VISA finally joining the Apple Pay Japan party? Is Google Pay support coming on iD?>

Like all cold war detente agreements, the proof will be in the pudding.

7-Eleven ATM Apple Pay Suica Recharge is not Express Card savvy. You have to use Touch ID/Face ID and put Suica in the manual ready state like an Apple Pay credit card.

The reader stand on the right of the touchscreen is designed for plastic cards with the NFC hit area at the bottom of the stand. This means you have to put iPhone on the stand upside down for Apple Pay Suica to work. It’s very awkward.

The process is not that fast.

The service is OK but nothing more. Suica cash recharge at the JR station or the convenience store cash register is a faster deal, and the convenience of Apple Pay Suica Recharge always beats cash recharge. The main benefit is that 7-Eleven ATMs are plentiful, open 24 hours and offer Suica cash recharge during the Mobile Suica late night maintenance offline hours 1am~4am.